The Besties - The Besties Podcast 45 - Fire Emblem: Awakening and Dead Space 3

Episode Date: February 15, 2013

The Besties are back! This week on The Besties, we discuss babies having babies and then having those babies fight for their baby parents. There's also talk of the thrills and chills of space combat, with an emphasis on the thrills. Hey, look at this, two solid games this week! We're on a roll! Warning: This episode contains spoilers for the movie, Safe Haven. If learning that makes you not want to listen, this probably isn't the podcast for you. 03:00 - Fire Emblem: Awakening 15:00 - Half Time 30:00 - Dead Space 3 48:30 - What's next? Theme song by Ian Dorsch Get the show: Download MP3" Subscribe to the podcast (RSS) Subscribe on iTunes Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

What are your plans for Valentine's Day? I don't- you know what? I couldn't even care more. I'm gonna have to finish my question. Oh, you're so- listen how cool. It's so commercial, right? So cool. Oh, thanks Hallmark. Ugh. Do you guys not tell your special somebody that you love them every day? This is fucking- beating this fucking drum again.

Beating this fucking drum every- Why are you letting corporations tell you how to love? Why does it have to be on February 14th and to one person? Because that's a lot easier than doing it every day of the year. Hey, Justin.

I love you. But only on February 14th. My name is Justin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Griffin McElroy, and I know the best game of the week. My name is Chris Plant, and you shouldn't write that joke on Twitter. My name is Russ Frustick. I know the best game of the week. Do you know what you did? Is that a West Side Story?

Instead of screaming, you just made it as long as possible. Of the week. Do you know what you did? Is that a West Side Story? Instead of screaming, you just made it as long as possible. Of the week. I actually prefer the fast to scream Rush Fresh stick because then it's like over faster. It's like a band-aid. You got to rip it off. Whenever I do emergency, I just pour it into like a shot glass of water and then just like get it. I don't even have water. I just put it directly into my mouth and then swish it around. That's best way to do it not true it's like freebasing let's do this

uh we're excited it's a big week on the besties where we talk about the latest and greatest in video gaming and compare and contrast i'm really excited about this week justin me too i've played we've all played yeah we've mainly sort of played both the games. And talk about contrast. We could not have found two games more different. Yeah, I think that is accurate. We're talking Aliens, Colonial Marines,

Oh God. And any good game. Any game ever, any other game released in the past five years. Except for Duke Nukem Forever. Which, hmm which I'm starting to put a pattern together here. Hey, so what do you guys want to dip into first? Fire Emblem. Let's do Fire Emblem.

Let's talk about Fire Emblem, a 3DS release about, I guess, what are we like a month deep into Fire Emblem now? Months since that? No, it's not that long a couple weeks it's only been a couple weeks you're right a couple weeks uh if you don't know fire emblem at all which i not only had i not played a fire emblem game i did not even have what i would describe as like a functioning knowledge of what the fire emblem games are and i still have not never like touched one of the other ones so here is what i understand fire emblem to be from playing fire emblem on the 3ds

fire emblem awakening uh it is a uh tactical uh game much like uh x-com uh for example where you have a uh a squad of fantasy-based archetypes that you are pitting in turn-based combat against another squad of fantasy-based archetypes, typically trying to wipe them off the map or protect someone or achieve some other sort of goal. But that's the basic idea. If you've played XCOM and you can imagine not guns,

but fireballs. Yeah, well, we should to to make another comparison um it's almost exactly like advanced wars yeah but instead of modern combat it's fantasy combat there are obviously differences in the gameplay but the core of it is feels very advanced wars um it is, I would say, it's sort of designed to be more difficult than most games. I personally have not played it on the harder difficulties that just doesn't really appeal to me.

I've really been enjoying it. I know that the game is sort of built around permadeath for your units, and I haven't been playing it that way oh really so i know russ russ you are a traditionalist i am indeed you i i i honestly feel like the the game becomes way more interesting if you're playing with permadeath uh because essentially you still what's out this is what this is what tore it for me though

do what's out but you said that if you one of your characters dies you you restart them yeah you don't have to do that that's just how i realized like i could do that in a more efficient manner by just not having them die but that i makes me more thoughtful i'm uh i'm like eight or nine hours into it and this is actually my third stab at trying fire emblem awakening and my first stab i did like a few hours and then my second step not even that much well before i started let me just explain uh for those that aren't aware with for the franchise so if you are familiar with advanced wars you might be thinking like permadeath what's that that's crazy in fire emblem uh there aren't there's no like resource gathering you're not like earning 50 coins to build a new archer essentially every unit in the game it has a name

and a backstory and a history and so every unit matters and if that unit dies in combat and you're using this permadeath setting they're gone forever they won't appear again so i was i was playing with permadeath on and just like that's here's the thing it is it you are right and that it is a completely different game when you have permadeath on because all of a sudden like protecting your units becomes your highest priority um and that that stretches out the battles the the problem is that for me it changed it changed the way that you have to play the game into a thing i didn't really care for which is a big part of the game is seeing where you can look on the the square map to see like what spaces enemies can get to and then you the

the basic strategy is when you're playing with permadeath on you don't want anybody to die is you take your big heavy tank guy and you move it just barely into the danger zone so that you can like sort of trick the enemy into coming in and attacking them and then you can swarm them with everybody else who's sort of hanging back and then you have to like pick people off one at a time like that like that was the only way i was making any progress on that mode but where that that uh came to a pretty significant blockade was like i had a mission where i had to get across the map as quickly as possible and it's just like i don't know man like it's just it just wasn't fun it was too punishing for me to to do that you know what I'm saying?

Like, do you know, like, that's a, it seems bonkers to me that there's a mode where you have to kill all 20 of their dudes without losing a single one of your dudes. Well, you can lose a single one of your dudes. I mean, the game is designed in such a way that because there are duplicates and, like, it's not the end of the game if you lose one of your dudes. I'll give you that, but at the same time, there's not always a skirmish for you. There's not always extra guys on the map for you to go fight so you can grind up some levels. Sometimes you have to move on to the next story.

But you can buy items that cause extra guys to appear on the map. And if you're out of money. This is a horrible scenario you're painting. to appear on the map and if you're out of money like there's there this is a horrible scenario you're painting well no because i money hasn't been like flowing like milk and honey in my game like i've actually been pretty strapped for cash the entire time so you can't like buy the special thing that makes more enemies appear i'm just saying that the traditional my rpg mindset of like i can't handle this right now so i'll go grind like sometimes that's not an option sometimes you just have to so that layers an entire like another element of you have to tip put your biggest strongest guy are you front barely in so that you can get attacked and then get your

weakest guy to deliver the finishing blow are you playing on hard or normal um i so i played on hard with perma death and i was like no that not going to happen. And then I tried playing on normal and normal was a fucking cakewalk. Yeah. So that's the issue that I had too, is that I just got, and I've played probably three or four Fire Emblem games to completion. And I found hard, like I, I just got crushed in the first, like, like third mission of the game in hard and I had to dial it back. And then I found, uh, normal, which is essentially easy to be too easy for me but what's interesting on hard it's not

just a matter of well they increase the chance for enemies to hit and or how much damage you're doing they actually change the ai so the ai doesn't fall for that stuff they'll actually even if you're not in their like zone of attack they'll still come after you so it's a lot more strategic and a lot more challenging on hard um now that i kind of know everything i know all the classes and stuff like that i feel like if i beat the game i would start again on hard and it would be more interesting to me right now i'm playing on hard with permadeath turned off and that seems to me like if you're coming at this and you know some stuff about strategy but like you want to have like a pleasant experience with the game at all like it just seems like i don't know it seems like that's the way to go because you can still be

outsmarted by the ai you can also save in the middle of battles when you play with permadeath off, when you play in casual mode, as they call it. So you can, like, if you have, like, a really good turn and you feel good about it, you can save after it and then you don't have to start the entire battle over because some of these battles are super long. So you can still get outsmarted by the AI and then not have to be like, well, that was fucking 45 minutes of my life that I'm just not going to get back. Like, that seems like such an awful experience.

I have a recommendation. Chris, what's your history with the series? So I have no history with the series, nor do I especially like strategy games outside of loving XCOM when I was a child and loving the new XCOM. So when I heard more XCOM, I was like pretty excited. I don't really like fantasy. I don't really like a lot of things that are in this game.

But I don't like things that are in this game and in other games. I don't like the genre. But what I would say is here's how I went into it. I played on normal, which I guess is easy, and I kept permadeath off, and I have just let people die. It's a long time before that even becomes a concern on normal because it is so easy, but I don't have however many hours this game is going to take anyway,

and I've enjoyed this idea of playing a story game that has a pretty entertaining story and has all these relationships with the knowledge that I just might not see the end and that I might just lose. Yeah, there's actually a surprisingly good localization. I think

there are scenes in between the levels that you can actually trigger. Some you can trigger out in the field and some you can trigger by going back to the barracks where two characters will talk to each other and there'll be a little scene where they sort of build a rapport and the scenes are all unique depending on which two characters are building that rapport but then they actually get combat bonuses yeah so this is and i'm glad you

brought that up justin because this might be the most insane part of Fire Emblem Awakening. I don't know if you guys have gotten to it yet, but so the end goal of doing these, apart from having minor bonuses in battle, the end goal is eventually, if you're dealing with two units that are of opposite sexes, which granted is a little close-minded, but that's okay. You know, they're doing their own thing, I guess.

Oh, so it's okay? Well, it's not. Oh, that's okay. You know, they're doing their own thing, I guess. Oh, so it's okay? Well, it's not. Oh, it's okay. It gets a pass from Russ. So with that in mind, two units will eventually get married if their support level gets high enough. Not only that, they'll get married, and they'll have a kid, and that kid will share skills of both parents and also because of

ridiculous story components that kid might be older than both parents uh and so you can then marry the baby to another baby and then those two babies can have kids and then they fight with you those babies and the baby babies that's the most fucked up thing about fire emblem it's a it's a surprisingly you know it kind of reminds me of persona in that regard where uh relationships are gamified in a way that um is pleasant makes a lot of sense uh i i uh anyway the localization i i thought was all really good. The scenes are surprisingly cute. I mean, there's nothing earth-shattering here, but they're fun.

I have a few issues with some of the stuff that's going... That goes on behind the progression of it and the customization and outfitting of characters. That's the thing I'm really sensitive about about RPGs. Like, I really need it to be something special. I, like, for instance, I don't like the fact that, like, spells and weapons have a number of uses that you can use them for, and then they break, and then they're gone forever. Like, I can understand that as, like, a series staple, but for me it's just kind of an annoyance

because it's like, oh, I ran out of that fire spell. I better go buy another one. Like, I can understand it being a thing for, like, the super rare weapons, and it's like, you better save this up because you can only use it a certain number of times. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Correct me if I'm wrong, Sir McElleroy aren't you a diehard pokemon fan i am yeah but if you use pikachu doesn't have like a number 10 next to his doesn't he have like when he dies number of limited

shock attacks until you were yeah but when he when he runs out of shock attacks you just take him to pokemon center and then he's full up again well here you just go to the store and buy a new spear i guess i mean i guess we are talking semantics there are some like you find like a rare spell every the the reason why it bums me out is because like i'll find a rare spell or a rare weapon and instead of being like psyched like oh man this is going to be so useful in battle it's like well there's another thing i have to like worry about every fight like oh is it is it time to use the good fire spell oh no i mean that's probably i might be uh you know showing showing my hand a little bit about how neurotic i am but um no it's it's that same it's i i've always hated and and i accept that this is like my personal thing but like i've always hated consumables and accept that this is, like, my personal thing, but, like, I've always hated consumables.

And, like, I'm the guy, I'll get to the end of a game, and, like, in the last boss battle, I'll have, like, 30 potions and 40, you know, stat-boosting items and all this garbage, because if it's consumable, I don't like to use it. And the way the repairs work, or, like, don't exist, I guess, in Fire Emblem um kind of turns every weapon into a consumable i mean it has a limited number of charges and there's also the work done

the worst consumable is the seals that you have to use to change classes i am so there's silver or second seals which lets you change like classes based on like the base classes or there's a what is it master seal there's two a master seal which lets you upgrade like the base classes or there's a what is it master seal there's two a master seal which lets you upgrade to those base classes like like upgraded more powerful class i am nine hours into the game you and here's the thing they are fairly expensive and you can only buy them once at special vendors that appear around the map at random that changes later in the game i'm okay well that's good because i'm nine hours into the game and i've only found one of them and like i've been too afraid to use it on yeah no they they become like far more common later when you work to to to progress a character

what's wrong this is why i don't like strategy games guys why it's so it's it's all rules you do like strategy games you just talked about how much you like xcom yeah but that's like aliens like oh my gosh it's like oh it's just like oh and then the number five goes up against three and if you get wait a minute but you love like board games this is all it's basically a board game i agree with sort of where plant is going with this and is actually why i've got it on like casual no death and just whatever the basic yeah you want to talk about i don't want to have to that crazy worry about elf man oh my gosh she's so annoying and pompous but i know what i think he's gonna fall in love with

that girl who you know has a chip on her shoulder because her father died man like they're gonna make it work yeah you know like because they always sit next to each other and battle and that gives them a plus 10 i can talk about what you want to talk about but you know like let's do it through the lens of love on the one hand i like the flexibility i like that it lets me turn it into a game that is accessible to me even if i don't want to have to be stressing constantly about how many charges my fire wand has or whatever i do wish the game was like balanced depending on the way you wanted to play and for example um i don't have permadeath on um so when i get new characters uh it's very much like well off to the closet yeah yeah you live you live in my toy box because i'm never ever going to use you for anything that is so it's so groovy to meet you uh deborah will help you find a dorm i guess back in the barracks and

you just like chill there because like i'm never gonna need you in my mind's eye that is the biggest problem that every just about every rpg and definitely definitely every strategy rpg faces and really none of them have really tackled it i think persona does a great job because persona has the blending element so like even when you get like a guy you know you're never going to use you're like well i am going to use your arms and i'm going to attach them to another that's how the fusion works in pursuit they rip their body parts off that's horrifying to make new guys yeah it's pretty scary but like that's they have some sort of utilitarian use even though it's not you know i'm gonna use you in battle and and yeah you're right like i got the uh the commoner guy with the crock pot on his head and it he's like, I have so much potential.

And it's like, well, you're level two, and all my dudes are level 11, so. So there's a lot of, like, crazy dark souls-y and type depth to these games, where in that case in particular, there is this, like, villager guy that joins you at level one and essentially will die in a single hit no matter what. But if you, like, shepherd him through levels and like let him

do the finishing kill on an enemy eventually he'll level up and right now i'm whatever 30 hours into the game and he is my best guy by like a mile so there's a certain aspect of like give me that pro tip before i started fucking playing i told justin that pro tip and i'm gonna gently nurse this guy yeah he's tremendous so but there's a lot of that comes from like the crazy like wikis online and stuff like that and but you can beat the game without knowing that stuff uh but it's kind of neat that there's like those little like certain characters have benefits that aren't readily apparent. Yeah. I've been thoroughly, thoroughly enjoying it, and I don't like games like this. I mean, there is a lot of...

I would ping it for, like, some of the unnecessary math and some of, like, the weirdly, like... Sometimes the tutorials are really heavy-handed, and sometimes it doesn't explain essential things like weapon degradation for example or weapon classes like um a lot of that stuff it just doesn't doesn't deal with um which is unfortunate because a lot of it is uh yeah it's uh i like it's a little like it's a it's a very content rich game and like i'm i dig on that when it's it's and it's all like meaningful content and

and it's it's satisfying to win a battle like it hits a lot of the the notes that i want from an rpg and an srpg it does that really well i just i don't know i just wish it wasn't tied to i always think it sucks when there's game mechanics built around like worrying you know what i mean like yeah that creates tension that's why uh survival horror games it's not tense though because i know i can just go out and get the new it's like it's chores at that point yeah okay that's fair i don't know i will say i hate jrpgs almost every single one i despise and i don't care for the story in this it's fine it's not writing home about but i i do care for the fact that you can skip every cut scene and every piece of dialogue just by hitting

start it's fantastic and every other game should adopt this why because the gameplay is great you can skip right to the gameplay if you don't care about the story which i really don't although i do like fighting with babies babies guys guys for for halftime i don't know if you're open to this because i know that russ hates spoilers oh no but but i i thought maybe i would tell you the entire story of the upcoming movie safe haven uh i would like that very much i actually already know the spoiler to this so feel free chris plant is this the the new nick sparks jam nicholas sparks jam hashtag safe haven starring uh hunky mcconk and dreamy mcdream girl um my wife watched the ad for that with me and

about literally six seconds in, she said, is this some of that Nicholas Sparks bullshit? And then almost as soon as she said it, it came up on the screen, based on a novel by Nicholas Sparks. Here comes that, open up, you're going to eat this Nick Sparks shit up like a pancake sundae. That ad looks way more menacing than I think the movie intends on being. Oh, no, no, it's a menacing movie.

And I will start that off by digging it. Spoilers incoming. If you plan on seeing this movie. Spoilers incoming. more menacing than i think the movie intends on being oh no no it's a menacing movie and i will start that off by spoilers incoming if you plan on seeing this incoming if you're planning on seeing this this week i'm sure our audience is waiting the the movie opens up with uh dreamy mcdream girl uh on the run because she is a murderess a murderer of humans uh and she is on the run from the police uh going down into the south uh where she finds a beautiful small town and a hunky dude and a new best friend named colby smulders okay uh first twist of the movie she's not a murderess she did not murder anyone the cop that is chasing her and put out an all pointspoints bulletin is actually an abusive, drunk ex-lover. So the hunky guy, Josh Duhamel, and the ex-lover, they have a fight, a fist fight, on the 4th of July during the fireworks extravaganza.

And a stray, an errant punch knocks the firework loose and it burns down josh do hamill's house uh his beautiful house his name josh dumel yeah there you go dumel uh i think it's caramel i think it's josh caramello josh quotation marks that sweet sweet in quotation marks here's the second twist right so the house burns down that wasn second twist, right? So the house burns down entirely. That wasn't really a twist. Well, the house burns down entirely, but twist. One desk survives because apparently it's fireproof. Inside, oh, one other thing.

One important thing I'm forgetting. So Josh Shumel is actually widowed. He has two children, but his wife uh recently died of cancer okay okay so that happens a lot inside of this desk is a three letters from his dead wife uh one is to the son and it's for him on his graduation oh the other is to their daughter uh for the day she gets married because you know let's assume she's not going to go to college she'll just marry somebody and the last letter is to to whoever her is to whoever the next wife is that josh

dumel ends up marrying right how come josh how come josh dumple doesn't get doesn't get a letter well you can imagine that maybe this to her letter is like shared with josh you know they'll read it and like cry on their wedding day so anyway like roll over it while they're making out he stores that letter for a while him let's make on my dead wife's letter. It's embarrassing. Sorry, lady. He just uses it to wipe up. Oh, gross. No. Come on. Okay, so.

This is a fucking family podcast. So, whatever. They fall in love. Josh Duhamel and the pretty girl who I think is dating Ryan Seacrest. They, like, you know, over time they fall in love. They, like, make out in the shower or whatever. And then, like, it becomes basically, like, their wedding day their wedding day or something you know like she's the one now so it's time for her to read the letter uh from from the dead wife she opens up the letter and it's

like oh you know josh d'amato what a good man you found are you making such a good choice and by the way you got the class i'm colby smolders and she goes what and she looks over at colby smolders and she's like i can go now and then she disappears god damn way they cut to a series of flashbacks all all of the six cents, in which we realize that every time the Bond pretty girl was talking to Colby Smulders, no one else was there. Oh, holy night. And then the movie ends. Wait, are you? And then the movie just ends. Can you give that again to me in like a two sentence?

Because I don't think I understand. No, I'll try to do it because no no no blind girl moves to the south befriends a handsome guy and a wacky sidekick coldy smolders uh handsome guy's wife uh is dead from cancer uh but has letters from this dead wife to give to the woman that he eventually falls in love with he falls in love with the blonde girl the blonde girl opens up the letter from the dead wife and finds out the dead wife and colby smolders were the same all along she was led there by a ghost the ghost of this man's dead wife okay now that she has introduced them and they've found each other the dead wife can disappear into the ether first of all i have a question one what does the letter say that lets her know that colby

smolders is the dead wife like does she in the letter does she say like hey look look up from your letter to see my ghostly visage this is gonna freak you the fuck out look like two rows back two rows back yeah that's me peace okay so that's one this is how listen this is how i met your ghost goodbye okay so the second question i have has anyone ever seen the movie over her dead body starring paul rudd and eva longoria basically the same because it's the same fucking plot movie without a twist i've seen a ghost of girlfriends past with uh uh with matthew uh mcconaughey yeah but in that case it was like the girlfriends were all dead uh they were yeah really yeah it's a really tragic it's a tragic story yeah there was a boat accident right there were there were four separate boat accidents wow i've seen

the last boy scout yeah i just want to say that. It's a good movie. That was a good description, Plant. Yeah, can you do it for me like a third time? Can you do it a third time? Can you like condense it more? I don't think I understand. Do it backwards. Take a second and really think about it because I want one sentence. Okay, okay.

Don't use blonger. No, no, no. I got it. I got it. Are you ready? Yeah. Robin is the mother, but she was dead all along.

Can you shorten it maybe three or four words? Boo! Lovely. That was a good segue, actually. That's Safe Haven. It's out on Wii U. It's an eShop from...

You know what? Even if the movie safe haven was on wii u it would be the best game to be released for wii u in months oh sad that's too that's actually too uh that a ghost story was a good segue i think to our uh other game of the week yeah right yeah very spooky well there are ghosts i guess dead space dead space three um i gotta tell you guys i want to say i've never been a big dead space fan you didn't like any of them i didn't finish the first one because i thought it was not very good too scary for you no it's just not good for me and then i i played the second one and liked it, but for some reason I got bored. So I actually went back and played the second half of two last week to prepare for Dead Space 3.

Wow. That's very dedicated of you. I enjoyed it a lot more than I did the first time. It's funny how sometimes you just got to find a game at the right time. Yeah. So people should know this Dead Space 3 tells tells the tale of i've forgotten his name is an engineer isaac gordon freeman isaac clark duncan he's an engineer he fixes spaceships in his free time uh and in this case the uh universe is a spaceship because he has to fix the universe

okay um so essentially dead space 3 is a story about throughout all the dead space games there's this these things called markers uh think of them as the halos of halo they're very important to the whole storyline and they've never explained what the hell they do like that be like going through five games and two novels and not explaining what the halo is so essentially they're using this game to explain what the hell they are uh unfortunately the story is a pretty joke laughable terribleness uh there's a love triangle while isaac clark is trying to save the world and fighting snow monsters but uh it is dead space insofar as you cut limbs off aliens and uh they jump out at you etc so that's pretty good sort of a recurring theme with Dead Space, I think.

Yeah. Like, in the second game, I mean, I was trying. Like, I was paying attention and stuff, and it never got beyond, like, we need the transponder core. Go turn it. Yeah, the second game makes no sense. It's in a giant space blender. Like, ah, come on. These games make sense in the same way game makes no sense. It's in a giant space blender. Like, ah, come on.

These games make sense in the same way Halo games make sense. No, but the first Halo game made sense. No. It did. If you play through the games and you don't, like, read the pages and listen to the logs, you are, you know, shit out of luck. But if you stop and listen to every log and defeat the whole pace of the game yeah it's like you have to choose do you want the experience that is right or do you want to like totally spoil the dramatic so the comparison would be like and when you're playing

through bioshock you could not pick up any of the audio logs and still have a pretty good sense as to like what the hell went on in rapture whereas here you would have no fucking idea what the hell is going on um which is sort of not great um on the bright side uh it does some things rather cool once you figure out how they work specifically so the one big change this time around is the weapon customization and it is crazy crazy complicated and really not well demonstrated as to how it works but once you figure it out it's super cool it like allows for a pretty insane level of customization over every gun do you have any do you want to take our listeners to the to the rust fresh deck pro tip corner

so like if you yeah I can do that. But Justin's going to do it. So guns have a few different basic components. Are there decals on the gun? There are three components. There's the frame, there's what you're shooting, and there's what you're shooting. Your boner, because you're holding such a cool gun. So, yeah, you can put – no, no. So, like, if you – the base weapon of the Dead Space, you know,... So like, the base weapon

of the Dead Space world is the plasma cutter. So if you have a basic handle and a plasma core and the normal tip at the end, you're gonna have a plasma cutter. If you have just the tip at the end, then that's not a

gun. You can use different tips to shape that plasma you can put a second tool onto your weapon uh if the frame's big enough and then have like a plasma cutter up top and maybe a rail gun below it or maybe you have something that shoots electricity uh and then you have additional upgrades like something that um improves your ability to freeze monsters with your stasis powers or an attachment that automatically uh picks up all the guns around you or a scope um and you can disassemble and reassemble these parts at will do not disassemble why not because

johnny five said that oh right uh that was that was well described g-o-o-d stuff russ that's that is the essential uh core components of the crafting system unfortunately hearing a human being say those things and actually seeing how it works in the game are two different matters oh yeah and and the way they portray it in the game is like you just got a military engine and you have no idea what the fuck a military engine is essentially you get these quote-unquote engines and they decide what kind of bullets you're shooting and then the tips decide how those bullets come out of your gun and there was an easy way to say that and it wasn't you just got a military engine attach it

to your upper core part sector uh so they do don't do a very good job explaining how it works but once you figure it out uh it's super cool because it essentially lets you strap two gun two guns on top of each other and uh add whatever kind of upgrades and parts you want um you also have the option to spend real world money to buy all the parts yeah you have the option to do that you don't have to there are a lot of in game components that like let you find

resources or you could sort of skip them and just pay a bunch of money to buy in game that stuff actually gets crazy you get these robots that you can deploy, and then they'll return to the workbench where you build everything after a while and bring you some resources. Okay, cool.

When you're at the bench, you can pay, like, $5 to increase the speed with which they return to you. You can pay $5 to increase the capacity that they have. You can pay $5 to give them a personality so they'll talk to you. A sarcastic personality. A sarcastic personality so they'll talk to you if you want to do that. I'm not shitting. $15.

That's pretty cheap to have friends, though. Yeah, $15. And then the little collection robots are, you know, as good as they could be and like do not just $15 yeah that's that stuff is $3 $5 you're only talking about three meals at subway and that's not really how you have to measure these things i mean that's rough but where do you i'm the conversation i want to have about this game, and I'm just going to go ahead and take over. How do you guys feel about the franchise's transition from being sort of... And I haven't played Dead Space 3, but I did play Dead Space 1 and 2 to completion, so I feel like I can confidently say that it moved from being more of a survival horror title

with action elements in the first one to a almost full-blown action game with... And I didn't hate Dead Space 2. I did genuinely like it, but it lost some of the specialness that Dead Space 1 had, which is that Dead Space 1 actually did scare the shit out of me from time to time, and it is very hard for a game to do that to me.

Here's the thing about horror that i think i i don't know if you can make a good sequel uh to a horror franchise like this i mean yeah because no one liked resident evil 2 is like yeah the best okay great they refined it uh but what i what i what i think is the problem with horror is you have to you have to be able to scare people and you have to be able to scare people, and you have to make sure that they don't know exactly what to expect. And revealing kind of what these monsters are and where you are in the universe in dead space is why it's so scary. You're like, you know nothing.

You are an engineer. You're not good with guns. You haven't killed before. You don't know what's going to be behind the corner. You've never seen the monsters. You don't know about the religion to be behind the corner. You've never seen the monsters. You don't know about the religion. It's all coming to you, and that's what's freaky as you slowly figure that stuff out.

Once you've kind of, you know, opened the kimono, there's not a lot to be scared of beyond jump scares. So unless they totally change the scope of it, you know, like Resident Evil 2 is scary because Resident Evil 1, it looks a thousand times better, they totally change the the the scope of it you know like resident evil 2 is scary because resident one one it looks a thousand times better so it's scary because it looks more realistic but two the scope is just such i feel like you are focusing on the artistic and psychological aspects of a horror game i'm saying mechanically dead space two by the end of dead space two i was a

fucking i was fucking one of the Gears of War dudes. Like, I was just. Yeah. So the crazy thing. Oh, yeah. Is that in this game, if you thought Dead Space 2 became an action game, it is half where this game is in terms of being an action game. Oh, man. You, like, within the first level, you are running through corridors.

first level you are running through corridors uh soldiers are throwing grenades at you and you've got about 60 health packs that you don't need to use because your inventory is full of health packs and ammo it is a complete complete push towards the action when i when i talk about it becoming an action game like i don't want it to be because it it's mostly made up of the same elements that the that dead Space 1 had in it. But there's just a, I think in order for a horror game to succeed, and a lot of the Resident Evils have gotten it right, a lot of them have gotten it wrong too, is the, like you said, there does have to be that uncertainty,

but there also has to be a balance of powerlessness that the character has to have. And I feel like dead space one walked that line that's that's the whole idea of resource management i know it's weird for me to say this after talking about how annoying that wasn't fire emblem but in a survival horror game like resource management is a check and balance put in there to make you feel powerless right um and and i so i yeah it's not just that it's not just that you have so much stuff by the end of it it's also that like you have a gun that can shoot an exploding ball of electricity and also

it has a saw blade that comes out and just devastates everything like by the end of dead space 2 i was so powerful i was literally just running past all of the monsters and like just bye guys i'm trying to get to the end of the game so i think what they did you know as we haven't really talked about it but dead space 3 has co-op throughout and i think the co-op the addition of co-op basically made them make this decision where they were like okay the last two dead space games a lot of the tension comes from uh you know when am i going to use this health pack when am i you know how much ammo am i going to hold for these specific guns um whereas adding co-op you can't really do that in a co-op game because it becomes a pain in the ass um waiting for the other person to like manage their inventory and health and

ammo and stuff so they streamline the ammo in that the ammo is universal it works for every gun and they streamlined pretty much i mean getting items the items come way more frequently frequently than they ever did so because of that i feel like they made a faster more reasonably paced co-op game and the sacrifice of that is that the single player game feels uh lacking intention because you're just being rained with ammo and health. Also, just the obvious thing that they wanted to make the franchise more profitable and horror is niche and action is mainstream.

Do you really think that's true? Yes. Sales-wise, it is. Yeah, I mean, look at movies. Why do you think they did that with Resident Evil? I mean, they failed with Resident Evil, but that's what they did. I guess what I don't get is the pushback from people in the industry and fans of the franchise

who say it doesn't have to be a horror game. Now it's an action game and it's their right to change it. People who get upset when I say I'm kind of disappointed in the way that it's going. My disappointment... Dead Space 2 is a good game.

I'm sure Dead Space 3 is a good game like i'm sure dead space 3 is a good game also um but i don't know i think it's more dead space 1 is just more special to me because it did stuff that other like games are not willing to do like it was scary it instead of throwing four monsters at you and having you mow them down it threw one monster at you and said you know you may or may not have what you need to to kill this guy right and that's 100 you're right that's like classic angry video game commenters and even colleagues telling people that they shouldn't be upset because the game needed to sell more i mean you can still like a game i don't know i think it's weird

to ever tell people that their opinion just shouldn't matter because of the business practices being legit or intelligent i i agree that like the the game is i'm actually enjoying it a lot and it's it's scratching some of the itches that uh the the games before did did not scratch um i'm also cognizant of the fact that they have sacrificed a lot to make that happen like you touched on health and ammo getting thrown at you but like it's constant i mean you're picking up items literally every five seconds i mean there's an ammo there's uh there's ammo. There's a part that you need. And yet it still wants you to manage your inventory. Yeah, right.

Yeah, there's health. You just got health. You just got, you know, a part that you need. You just got a weapon component. You just got, I mean, it's almost like a loot game. It's almost like a Diablo level of, like, finding junk constantly. The downloadable content stuff, I don don't i'm not crazy about because i think you should you should balance your game based on the way that the game is most enjoyable um also the

the co-op thing is crazy you have this guy who's your partner and he just appears at random moments that haven't i mean he's never with you while you're playing i mean if you're playing single player never with you while you're playing and then sometimes in a cut scene he'll just be like how did you know how did you oh i found this other door back here that just got me right there there was no shooting or anything so it was pretty great hey man why don't you just come up here it It is way easier. It is fucking breezy up here. It is fine. What I would say for those people who are really bummed out about Dead Space not being horror anymore

is if you can get a cheap, cheap, cheap PC, there are a lot of really good horror games on PC that don't require anything powerful. I mean, you can take your parents my disappointment my disappointment isn't that there are no horror games to play because i know there's there's this franchise isn't that it's a dead space one like i don't know like i had a lot of that was back when ea was like that was like the mirror's edge era where it was like they're fucking turning it around with this new ip and like i played it and was skeptical and then was just blown away by how much i really liked it um and then i don't know just i i play so many of these fuck and like just because there's a lot

doesn't mean they're bad i i admit that but i don't know that i played so many action games in the past year it's like man till you play army of two or three it's like I played the demo of dead space 3 and like I'm in a frozen tundra and escaping a train as it falls off a cliff and it's like I don't know it's just I've done that before

I've been there I think that it's not it's not going to be for everybody I think if you're a horror devotee you're going to be irritated with the direction. I've never been like, I mean, I might have screamed at high pitch once or twice, but it's not a scary game. No, it's not a scary game, mainly because you've got like a military engine and a plasma core and everything, and a gun that shoots exploding lightning balls. But it does expand the scope quite a bit.

Lengthwise, it's about twice as long as Dead Space 2. It's got a lot of side missions, optional missions that you can go on. It also takes you out into space more, where in Dead Space 2, you occasionally enter zero-G areas where you had free movement. Other times, in Dead Space 3, you were actually space-walking, going from shuttle to shuttle and finding... Yeah, it feels a little more Metroid-y that way. Yeah, I think that that's fair.

Guys, I have a question about those guns, right? So in the first game, you're an engineer, and you kind of, like, jerry-rig your engineer machine into, like, killing things. You're making the best of what you've got. By Dead Space 3, what is going on? Like, you get ammo, but you're using the same weapon from dead space you realize you're using you happened on the best weapon you could possibly happen upon you got it on the right

the rest of the world realized that your tool was the future of like warfare so they built benches everywhere yeah apparently like what i really like it's such a shame too because it it again and i say this saying that like admitting that like i enjoy playing dead space 3 more than i did the first two but again like it's such a cool idea that he's using um that he's using like engineering tools to fight these monsters i mean even if it's just a glorified you know plasma pistol or whatever um it's it's a neat conceit that he's using engineering tools you know welding guns and stuff like that rivet guns stuff like that to to to fight with and like it's it's it's a shame that that they've sort of eschewed that for uh traditional weapons. I mean, you actually can just make a submachine gun now.

I mean, you know. They call it something engineering-y, or like the grenade launcher is the survey charge. Super fast nail shooter. Well, I mean, like the military engine, if you use that, it doesn't even pretend, like it just calls it like a carbine or whatever. Yeah.

So it's a shame that they've sort of moved. This feels like a carbine or whatever. So it's a shame that they've sort of moved. This feels like a desperate, not desperate, this feels, yeah, okay, kind of desperate ploy to make this a commercial smash. Please, please, please let this turn into a

giant commercial game. It's lost a lot of what I think makes it special. And the ways in which it succeeds are, are not particularly interesting. I think. Although I think the weapon customization is cool. No,

I do think, yeah, I think, I think that is actually a good example of an evolution that makes a lot of sense. And the rest of it, I would agree. It doesn't seem to evolve too much.

Uh, should we talk about what we're doing next week? Bit trip runner. Oh yeah. week bit trip runner oh yeah so bit trip runner 2 uh if you like running and jumping uh it's not often that you have a game that has both running and jumping in it um i i uh what are we gonna what are we gonna what's the other thing we're gonna get dip into uh crisis or uh or metal gear i am psyched for crisis i might actually pick that i can't run it i can't run it on a i don't have a good pc and laid on a 360 yeah but that takes a lot of the charm okay yeah i guess so um i'll play bit trip runner you guys can play the other one. Okay, good. Perfect. Glad. God, you already bailed.

I'll dip in. I don't know. Those are good. Who's got the time? Who does have the time for all these video games? It's true. Also, the PlayStation 4 is coming out next week. Jesus, please. People are going to be shocked when they say, and by the way,

they're in stores now under your butt we've got one game that works let's let's go around but it's the last guardian let's go around the internet table let's drop some predicties we'll start just we'll go justin start with you and we'll get our predicties out 500 500 oh is that what we're predicting? That's not the price? I mean, you could talk about anything. Okay. I think it'll be 500. Okay. I think it'll have a Blu-ray drive.

I think it'll have a terabyte of storage. I think it's going to have Metroid. It's going to have, no, it's going to have a terabyte of storage. It's going to have move functionality up in it. It's going to be really powerful. It's going to have a screen on the controller. Okay, that's good. I'm going to predict that it's black with Spider-Man font.

I want to predict a new font. New font. Okay. Oh, Comic Sans? That'd be pretty cool. Hey! Hey, kids! I'm the Orbis!

Come play your fun clown games on me it's the playstation 4 guys please playstation quattro i think they're gonna go with the four just seems like such a it's so many there's a lot of numbers here's how it's gonna go down it's gonna be like playstation vision or some bullshit like that guys here's how it's gonna work i got the inside scoop okay man stage stage lights rise a man walks on the stage he goes ladies and gentlemen my name is tom kolinsky and i am the new ceo of son. And people are like, what? Who's Tom Kalinske? And everybody Googles it, and they check out his LinkedIn page, and they're like, wait a second. This was the CEO of Sega in 1995.

Why would they bring out Tom Kalinske? And he goes, I am ready to announce that the Sony PlayStation 4 is coming out today for $800 exclusively at Toys R Us. And people are like, no way. This is a game changer. And then Tom Kalinske goes, what? And then his head explodes. And then Miyamoto comes out of his head. He crawls out of his head. And he says, and we just bought apple

sonic the hedgehog shows up and starts giving him a sensual massage is this what we're doing yeah yeah no no keep going steve jobs comes out and says i was formed in battle when my dad steve jobs had a high enough support ranking with Sonic the Hedgehog. And then Tails flies in and he grabs a building and he transports us to Mars. That's fun. Yeah, and then we see that Mars rover and we're like, what? This was all shot on a soundstage and

Stanley Kubrick's not even dead. I think a little big planet three, I think that's likely. I don't know. That seems too far-fetched. Well, we're going to be back next Friday for the besties with all these things that we've been talking about, and by then we'll know what the PS4 is. Okay, it's not Orbis.

It's not PS4. It's the PS4bis. Think about it. Think about it. Think about it. Oh man, this has been an episode. This is an episode and a half. Well, we've done a lot. We've done a lot of work here, guys.

There's many sounds and consonants. So thanks for joining us. Make sure to come to Polygon.com. It's our website. Follow us on Twitter, etc, etc, etc. Subscribe and make sure to join us again next Friday for the besties. Because shouldn't the world's best friends play the world's first games?

Besties!